Writing Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Mesopotamia=== While research into the development of writing during the [[Neolithic|late Stone Age]] is ongoing, the current consensus is that it first evolved from economic necessity in the [[ancient Near East]]. Writing most likely began as a consequence of political expansion in ancient cultures, which needed reliable means for transmitting information, maintaining financial accounts, keeping historical records, and similar activities. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration outgrew the power of memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form.{{sfn|Robinson|2003|p=36}} The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the emergence of civilisations and the beginning of the [[Bronze Age]] of the late [[4th millennium BC]]. The [[Sumerian language|Sumerian]] archaic [[cuneiform script]] and the [[Egyptian hieroglyphs]] are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3300 BC<ref>{{Cite web |title=British Library |url=https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/where-did-writing-begin |access-date=2022-02-28 |website=www.bl.uk |archive-date=11 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220311085214/https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/where-did-writing-begin |url-status=live }}</ref> with earliest coherent texts from about [[26th century BC|2600 BC]]. It is generally agreed that Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of [[cultural diffusion]]. [[File:Accountancy clay envelope Louvre Sb1932.jpg|thumb|upright|Globular envelope with a cluster of accountancy tokens, Uruk period, from [[Susa]]. [[Louvre Museum]]]] Archaeologist [[Denise Schmandt-Besserat]] determined the link between previously uncategorized clay "tokens", the oldest of which have been found in the Zagros region of Iran, and the first known writing, [[Mesopotamian]] [[cuneiform]].<ref name="Rudgley">{{cite book | title=The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age| last=Rudgley| first=Richard| author-link=Richard Rudgley| year=2000| pages=48β57| publisher=Simon & Schuster| location=New York}}</ref> In approximately 8000 BC, the Mesopotamians began using clay tokens to count their agricultural and manufactured goods. Later they began placing these tokens inside large, hollow clay containers (bulla, or globular envelopes) which were then sealed. The quantity of tokens in each container came to be expressed by impressing, on the container's surface, one picture for each instance of the token inside. They next dispensed with the tokens, relying solely on symbols for the tokens, drawn on clay surfaces. To avoid making a picture for each instance of the same object (for example: 100 pictures of a hat to represent 100 hats), they 'counted' the objects by using various small marks. In this way the Sumerians added "a system for enumerating objects to their incipient system of symbols".{{quote without source|date=June 2023}} The original [[Mesopotamian]] writing system was derived around 3200 BC from this method of keeping accounts. By the end of the 4th millennium BC,<ref>{{cite book|chapter=The Origin and Development of the Cuneiform System of Writing|first=Samuel Noah|last=Kramer|author-link=Samuel Noah Kramer|title=History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History|pages=381β383|isbn=978-0-8122-7812-5|year=1981|edition=3rd|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press}}</ref> the Mesopotamians were using a triangular-shaped stylus pressed into soft clay to record numbers. This system was gradually augmented with using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted by means of [[pictographs]]. Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing was gradually replaced by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term [[cuneiform script|cuneiform]]), at first only for [[logogram]]s, but by the 29th century BC also for phonetic elements. Around 2700 BC, cuneiform began to represent syllables of spoken [[Sumerian language|Sumerian]]. About that time, Mesopotamian cuneiform became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers. This script was adapted to another Mesopotamian language, the [[East Semitic]] [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]] ([[Old Assyrian period|Assyrian]] and [[Babylonia]]n) around 2600 BC, and then to others such as [[Elamite language|Elamite]], [[Hattian language|Hattian]], [[Hurrian language|Hurrian]] and [[Hittite language|Hittite]]. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for [[Ugaritic language|Ugaritic]] and [[Old Persian language|Old Persian]]. With the adoption of [[Aramaic language|Aramaic]] as the 'lingua franca' of the [[Neo-Assyrian Empire]] (911β609 BC), Old Aramaic was also adapted to Mesopotamian cuneiform. The last cuneiform scripts in Akkadian discovered thus far date from the 1st century AD.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page